Harry's Christmas
by MasterHyperion-Reborn
Summary: Merry Christmas! It's that time of year in Hogwarts, and among all the festivities, a boy sits at a window, reliving the past. Warning, this is kinda sad. Proceed at your peril :P.


**A/N**

**Merry Christmas everyone!**

**Demons should come out eventually. Sorry, but I've hit a bit of a stump, and life in general is slowing it all down. I'll sort it out, but it just may take a while. This should hopefully keep you happy in the meantime. Well, I say happy…**

The boy stared out the window to the grounds below. It had been snowing all day, and the familiar area was covered in glistening white. Squinting, he could just see the tell-tale smoke coming off the gameskeeper's hut in the distance. If someone could see this boy's face, they would be shocked at the completely haunted look he had.

"Merry Christmas Padfoot."

Harry continued to gaze through the glass, but he didn't see it. Instead, his mind kept playing the scene over and over. Sirius, duelling Bellatrix Lestrange, his own cousin. Sirius, getting hit by some sort of curse in a moment of distraction. Sirius, falling, almost too slow to see, but still completely unstoppably backwards. Sirius, getting swallowed up by the Veil.

It haunted his dreams. He simply couldn't forget. Not even a year had passed since the horrific day, and they just expected him to _forget_! Forget about his godfather, forget about the only person who really seemed to care about him, after Cedric had died. Forget that it was _all his fault_. It was his fault Sirius was gone. His fault Cedric was dead. **His fault**.

He kept going back to that. In truth, his mind never left it. Sirius, his friend, his godfather, his only hope, was gone. Stolen from him, from the world, by the Veil. It was almost too much to really take. Not only this, but the whole thing had been _designed_ by Voldemort. Finally, a prophecy had been shoved onto his head. He had to kill someone. He had to become a murderer, all for the sake of some fraudulent seer. He couldn't even consider taking someone from the world like Sirius had been stolen. No excuse he could think of helped. So what if he was a mass-murderer? So what if he was evil? It was still a life Harry was being forced to take. It was too much.

All of it was too much. He couldn't take any of it separately, let alone all of it at once. It was threatening to overwhelm him. Drown him, until there was nothing left of Harry James Potter. Just a husk remaining in the world, still staring out into the night.

Suddenly, another memory broke through the never-ending cycle of despair: A memory of another Christmas, spent in Grimmauld Place. Rather predictably, Sirius had had too much firewhiskey, and stated dancing around the house, singing 'God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriff'. He remembered laughing at his godfather's drunken antics, before returning to the game of Exploding Snap he'd been playing with Ron. He wishes he could have spent more time with Sirius, before he was stolen from him. Tears started rolling down his cheeks.

Unbidden, another memory appears. Sirius had pranked everyone's rooms while they slept on Christmas Eve, and everyone had been woken by ice-cold water being dumped on the faces, followed by their hair changing colour and length randomly throughout the day. Harry and Remus had gotten him back though, by turning his nose upside down as he slept. It turned out Remus knew quite a number of prank spells, and knew exactly how to use them. When Sirius had walked into the kitchen, he'd somehow procured a tiny bowler hat, which he'd then balanced on his upside-down nose, and then proceeded to completely ignore it for the entire morning. The sight had sent Remus and Harry into hysterics, and Sirius' perfectly innocent questioning look afterwards had simply served to send them into even greater peels of laughter.

More memories piled in. Sirius and Harry, talking after leaving the Shrieking Shack, his joy at having someone who wanted to look after him. Sirius, almost bouncing off the walls at something Moony had slipped into his morning coffee. Sirius as a dog, chasing Harry around the house, trying to get him back for shaving him during the night.

A smile came to the boy's face. Yes, Sirius was dead. Yes, Harry would miss him, but the last thing he would want would be for Harry to stop living his life after Sirius died.

"Don't stop living life to the full!" He's once told Harry. His smile morphed into a full-blown grin. Yes, his life sucked, but he couldn't let that stop him.

"Merry Christmas Padfoot." And this time, he truly meant it, felt it. He heard a voice he'd never hear again, in that moment:

"That's my boy!"


End file.
